An early work by M.G. Lewis (1775-1818) and appropriately a translation of a German author who greatly influence English gothic fiction, Frederick Schiller, who was admired and translated by others, as well, most prominently among them S. T. Coleridge. Inscribed on the front paste-down "Lady Susan Thorpe / 1797 / Her gift to Lord Dunmore 1799." Later Dunmore Library bookplate on the paste-down. John Murray, the fourth earl of Dunmore, was active in the British Colonies as a colonial governor. Susan Thorpe also wrote her name on the first page of text, near the name of one of the primary characters in the play, Elizabeth Munster, perhaps as an act of identifying with her.